The great divide...

13.12.14:

The great divide-

The bottom 10 per cent of India held just 0.2 per cent of the country’s total wealth in 2014, while the top 10 per cent held 74 per cent, new data from Credit Suisse show. The top 1 per cent alone held nearly half of India’s total wealth.

The share of the top 10 per cent has increased by nearly 10 percentage points since 2000. The share of the top 1 per cent, historically lower than the share of the top 1 per cent globally, has been growing faster than the rest of the world.

Yet Indians make up nearly 20 per cent of the world’s poorest tenth and just 0.5 per cent of the world’s richest 1 per cent.

Share of wealth held by class (2014):

Bottom 10% - 0.20%                                                                             Top 10% - 74

10-20% - 0.40                                                                                          5% - 65.50

20-30% - 0.80                                                                                          1% - 49

30-40% - 1.30

40-50% - 1.80

50-60% - 2.60

60-70% - 3.80

70-80% - 5.70

80-90% - 9.40

[The Hindu - Monday, December 8, 2014, Thiruvananthapuram, p. 11]

 In 2013, the Indian government stated 21.9% of its population is below its official poverty limit.^[4] The World Bank, in 2010 based on 2005's PPPs International Comparison Program,^[5] estimated 32.7% of Indian population, or about 400 million people, lived below $1.25 per day on purchasing power parity basis.^[6][7] According to United Nations Development Programme, an estimated 29.8% of Indians lived below poverty line in 2009-2010.^[8]

The World Bank reviewed and proposed revisions in May 2014, to its poverty calculation methodology and purchasing power parity basis for measuring poverty worldwide, including India. According to this revised methodology, the world had 872.3 million people below the new poverty line, of which 179.6 million people lived in India. In other words, India with 17.5% of total world's population, had 20.6% share of world's poorest in 2013.^[7][16]

Reserve Bank of India (2012)[edit]

In their annual report of 2012, Reserve Bank of India names the state of Goa as having the least poverty of 5.09% while national average stands at 21.92%^[4] The table below presents the poverty statistics for rural, urban and combined, percent below poverty line (BPL) for each State or Union Territory.^[4] The highest poverty statistic for each category column, is colored light red in the table below.

Among those indicators, three illustrate this point. Infant mortality rates, as one example, fell from 146 deaths per thousand births in the 1950s to 80 at the start of this decade. Nevertheless, the Indian rate is still high and two Indian states, Orissa (124 per thousand in 1991) and Madhya Pradesh (117 per thousand in 1991), even recorded proportionally more infant deaths than the sub-Saharan average (104 per thousand in 1991). Life expectancy at birth, now twice the 30 years that was the Indian average in 1947, remains well below that of China (69 years.) Adult literacy rates for Indian males (64 percent) and for females (39 percent) in 1991 were almost identical to those for sub-Saharan Africa and far behind those in China — 96 percent for men, 85 percent for women — ten years earlier.

1. Hunger remains the No.1 cause of death in the world. Aids, Cancer etc. follow.

2. There are 820 million chronically hungry people in the world.

3. 1/3^rd of the world’s hungry live in India.

4. 836 million Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 (less than half-a-dollar) a day.

5. Over 20 crore Indians will sleep hungry tonight.

6. 10 million people die every year of chronic hunger and hunger-related diseases. Only eight percent are the victims of hunger caused by high-profile earthquakes, floods, droughts and wars.

7. India has 212 million undernourished people – only marginally below the 215 million estimated for 1990–92.

8. 99% of the 1000 Adivasi households from 40 villages in the two states, who comprised the total sample, experienced chronic hunger (unable to get two square meals, or at least one square meal and one poor/partial meal, on even one day in the week prior to the survey). Almost as many (24.1 per cent) had lived in conditions of semi-starvation during the previous month.

9. Over 7000 Indians die of hunger every day.

10. Over 25 lakh Indians die of hunger every year.

11. Despite substantial improvement in health since independence and a growth rate of 8 percent in recent years, under-nutrition remains a silent emergency in India, with almost 50 percent of Indian children underweight and more than 70 percent of the women and children with serious nutritional deficiencies as anemia.

12. The 1998 – 99 Indian survey shows 57 percent of the children aged 0 – 3 years to be either severely or moderately stunted and/or underweight.

13. During 2006 – 2007, malnutrition contributed to seven million Indian children dying, nearly two million before the age of one.

14. 30% of newborn are of low birth weight, 56% of married women are anaemic and 79% of children age 6-35 months are anaemic (വിളര്‍ച്ച).

15. The number of hungry people in India is always more than the number of people below official poverty line (while around 37% of rural households were below the poverty line in 1993-94, 80% of households suffered under nutrition).

12000/ 6000 no roof over….